3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) has started to study Proximity based Services (ProSe) for both commercial and public safety uses. 3GPP SA1 (Services Working Group) has initiated some security requirements for secure communication, UE (User Equipment) identity, and privacy protection.
ProSe represents a recent and enormous socio-technological trend. The principle of these applications is to discover instances of the applications running in devices that are within proximity of each other, and ultimately to also exchange application-related data. In parallel to this, there is interest in proximity-based discovery and communications in the public safety community.
ProSe communication can provide services to the UEs in proximity via an eNB (Evolved Node B) or without the eNB. The SA1 requires that the ProSe service be provided to UEs with or without network coverage. The UEs can discover other nearby UEs or be discovered by other UEs, and they can communicate with each other. Some use cases can be found in NPL 1.